My name is Ian Bridges and I am a pure mathematics major at Florida State
University. I was born and raised in Virginia Beach where I enjoyed running,
playing jazz music on the drums, going to the beach, and learning about
mathematics and computers. I love to stay busy, and nowadays I enjoy hanging
out with my friends, weightlifting, hiking, spending time with my girlfriend,
reading math and computer science books, and (still) going to the beach! All in
all, I guess not much has changed.
I decided to apply for an IDEA Grant to in order to support my passion for
computing. Most of my classes are mathematics based and so I don’t have a lot
of time to give to learning about computer science topics. I find this a shame
because I really enjoy programming and developing products that improve
people’s lives, even if it’s in a small way.
In specific, my IDEA Grant project aims to increase accessibility of medical
research articles to the layperson. In the event that my project idea is
fulfilled in its entirety, there would also be opportunities for unique data
visualization and better search times/results for those conducting reviews of
the literature. I plan to learn about and use artificial intelligence and/or
machine learning to develop a model that is focused on natural language
processing. In other words, I am planning on making a machine learn how to read
a medical research article. The model will be able to identify the experimental
variables within the articles and their correlation, i.e. answering the
question “is the independent variable positively or negatively correlated with
the dependent variable?”
Initially, I planned for this model to be used on a website which would present the most recent medical articles labeled with variable data and correlations, that way a layperson may be able to draw conclusions about a certain topic using the most recent research. Though this would undoubtedly be very useful, I do not think it would be possible given the time frame. A goal which will be achieved during the time frame is the
production of an academic article which establishes a framework for realizing
the project idea in its entirety. Once this project is realized and the model
is developed, the model and accessory programs can also be given to research
personnel who may be able to use it to search for articles based on
independent/dependent variable instead of keyword. Hopefully, this “variable”
search will be faster and more precise than keyword search.
Currently, I have a very limited understanding of artificial intelligence first
principles, mathematical foundations, and technologies. This project will
require me to learn about all of these topics. I have experience coding in
Python, so I will need to learn about the artificial intelligence libraries
available for Python users such as PyTorch and TensorFlow. In addition, the
university offers some computing resources which may be useful if I choose to
train my own model and not use another one, such as GPT-3.
I hope that this IDEA Grant will help familiarize me with artificial
intelligence as it is a prospective research area for me as I plan to enter
graduate school after my graduation from Florida State University. In graduate
school, I hope to use mathematics to solve problems related to computing of all
kinds, including numerical methods, quantum computing, machine vision, and
artificial intelligence. Therefore, my IDEA grant project is one of the first
steps in my journey towards this goal!
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